The present invention relates generally to the field of bras and garments containing breast supporting components, and in particular to a new and useful breast pad construction with improved nipple concealment for use in bras, camisoles, slips, dresses, swimsuits or any other breast covering garment having breast supporting components therein.
It is known to provide resilient pads in bras to accentuate the figure and support the breasts of a woman. While thick pads are effective in concealing the nipples of a wearer, they also add extra weight that may not be desirable. Bras without pads are known but these have limited ability to enhance the figure and often are too thin to adequately conceal the nipples of a woman wearing the bra.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,311,583 issued Dec. 25, 2007 to Jagaric, et al. and assigned to the assignee of the subject application, discloses a light weight breast pad construction for a bra or garment with breast supporting component, having a thicker or denser summit area for each pad for concealing each nipple. Although generally effective, in some cases the nipples of a wearer are not full concealed. U.S. Pat. No. 7,311,583, as well as U.S. Pat. No. 7,052,360 issued May 30, 2006 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,997,775 issued Feb. 15, 2006 on applications in the same patent family as U.S. Pat. No. 7,311,583, are incorporated here by reference for their teaching of methods for manufacturing and materials for use in bra pads and breast covering pads for other garments.
FIG. 1 shows a bra pad of the prior art, in particular U.S. Pat. No. 7,311,583, where the pad is a three dimensional cup-shaped structure 100 that comprises a top fabric layer 112 of flexible fabric material, a top foam layer 118 of resilient and formable foam material adhered to an inner surface of the top fabric layer, and a nipple concealing shaved disk 120 of resilient and formable foam material adhered to an inner surface of the top foam layer 118, or formed as part of the inner surface of the top foam layer 118. A bottom foam layer 124 of resilient and formable foam material is adhered directly to an inner surface of the top foam layer 118 and disk 120, and a fabric lining layer 126 of flexible fabric material is adhered to an inner surface of the bottom foam layer 124. As shown in the photograph of FIG. 4, where a model is wearing a bra with pads construction according to FIG. 1, even though there is some concealment of the nipples, they can still be detected at the outer surface of the bra.
Improvements thus can still be made in light weight but supportive breast covering pads that have effective nipple concealing properties but which do not add excessive weight or bulk to the garment as would be the case for heavily padded bras.